East Africa 2080 is a slow-motion Malthusian detonation: erupting with cities, development, money, and most of all, people. The region has a total population of 2 billion, from the Rift Valley down through the African Great Lakes, and has burst fully forth from its (post-)colonial shell to become a conurbated hyperpower, driven by trade and export.

Though spanning several countries across the continent, the region operates fluidly and in concert thanks to a linear intensity that stitches the region together: the Spine. The Spine is a peculiar utopian quirk, Cuidad Lineal meets Archigram on steroids, and functions like the early-2000s Pearl River Delta crossbred with a delirious reinterpretation of Cedric Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt.

As the region rapidly urbanized beginning in the late 2020s, it was the site of intense infrastructural development, often in the form of massive trans-national projects. These aquaducts and electrical pylons and transit lines were expanded and intermeshed to form the Spine as it currently exists, though it is now nearly unrecognizable beneath a thick scrim of autonomous additions and refinements carried out on both personal and massive scales.

In addition, the Spine has been throughly stitched into the existing and expanding urban fabric, as cities desperate for connectivity and amenities ‘plug in’ and participate along its length. The Spine is the sum total of the cities that feed and produce it, and is also a superstructural overlay that in turn unifies and expands the urban areas it penetrates.